


Dreaming of You

by ClarkeStetler, Goosenik



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Comfort, Comfort/Angst, Deaf Clint Barton, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Marvel Universe, Natasha Romanov Feels, Nightmares, One Shot, Post-Avengers (2012), Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:47:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28076457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClarkeStetler/pseuds/ClarkeStetler, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goosenik/pseuds/Goosenik
Summary: Based on the prompt: “They both have nightmares in which Clint succeeded in killing Natasha “slowly, intimately, in every way he knows you fear.” When it’s Clint, Natasha holds him and puts one of his hands over her heart so he can feel she’s still alive. When it’s Natasha, Clint lets her pin him down and makes her look him in the eyes so she can see that they’re grey, not blue.”Aka: a quickie eight-page one-shot of Clintasha hurt/comfort fluff, because they would both definitely have issues after what they went through in Avengers.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov
Kudos: 33





	Dreaming of You

**Author's Note:**

> Our first published fic with these characters! We saw this prompt and couldn't resist. Let us know what you think and if you'd like to see more of them?
> 
> Also note: this is just a snapshot of each nightmare and what happens after. It does not take place in the same night or two consecutive nights, there's a time skip between.

#### Clint

_The world was calm, and quiet, and every detail stood out in sharp focus._

_Clint reached down with blood-slick fingers and turned the head of his target, dropping them slightly to feel the pulse at her neck. Her breath was slow and rattling, and her heart rate was erratic, slowing with every second that passed. She had stopped fighting him back a while ago. It wasn’t her fault-- it was hard to fight when your body was as broken and ruined as hers was._

_She’d tried to talk at first, so he’d removed her tongue with an arrowhead. It had been distracting. Of course, no tongue meant that she tasted like blood, but the smell was so thick in the air, everything tasted like blood._

_The pulse stopped in the same moment that the rattling broke off, and he stood again, leaving the broken doll in pieces on the floor as he slung his bow back over his shoulders. His mission was complete, he was free to report back._

_And then abruptly, violently, the world was no longer calm, or quiet, or focused. Suddenly it was Natasha on the ground in front of him._

_Clint was only aware of screaming as he crashed to his knees in front of her, desperately trying to find a pulse, trying to do CPR or find any sign of life, anything to prove that the woman who was his center, the only thing that made life worth it, wasn’t gone. And he’d done it. This damage, this pain and blood on her skin, in her hair, it was his fault all of this was his fault and she had fought but she hadn’t fought hard enough because she never really fought hard enough against him and--_

He was screaming, his voice bouncing around the room, sounding weird and distorted as he woke, jerking and reaching out as he tried to compress Nat’s chest, restart her heart, anything but leave her cold on the floor--

“Clint. _Clint_.” Vibrations in the air, her voice’s pattern as familiar as the sound of his boots on the ground or the texture of his bowstring taut beneath his fingers. Her hands were on his face then, on his shoulders, on his face again, and she was moving into his lap, dark eyes locked on his. “Clint. _Solntse_ , I’m right here. Hey, I’m right here.” She grabbed one of his hands, pressing it to her chest, and her heartbeat drummed there, defying his dream with a steady rhythm.

The world was shaking because he was shaking, ice having replaced his veins and nausea rolling in his stomach. He leaned over the bed and vomited into the trash can. She didn’t move off of him, though her fingers stroked the back of his neck. She pushed a glass of water into his free hand, watching as he took a drink, then she set it aside again as he sat back up. He placed his right hand back on her heart and closed his eyes as he tried to focus. It was there. Strong and steady. Her pulse hadn’t stopped, he could feel the warmth of her all around him. She wasn’t dead. He hadn’t killed her, she was speaking so he hadn’t-- he stopped himself with almost physical force, the thought too horrifically nauseating to entertain, his fingers still twitching with the dreamt physical memory.

Clint’s breath was coming in shuddering gasps that sounded embarrassingly close to sobs. He buried his face in her neck, shame and guilt and pain making him feel like he was going to throw up again. He let the vibrations of her heart and breathing shiver across his skin as he tried to breathe, tried to relax, and she hummed softly, low in her throat, a soothing sort of noise that she only ever made for him to feel.

“It’s okay.” Her arms banded around him, stronger than anyone ever expected when they faced her, and she rested her chin on his shoulder. “We’re at the Tower, we’re safe.” She traced her fingertips across his back, tucking her legs around his back. She let him breathe again for a moment, then, “Loki again?”

Fucking Loki. Most of Clint’s time with Loki was a blur he tried not to examine. Some pieces had filtered back slowly in the month or so since they’d defeated the god, but most of it stayed quiet. Natasha thought it was better that way. He wasn’t sure.

He did remember, though, Nat’s eyes as he came at her, her voice calling his name and trying to reason with him.

He’d spent the next two days after the incident watching every video that was accessible of what he’d done, both to Nat and everyone else. Then he’d watched her interview with Loki and it was that, really, that had kick-started his nightmares.

_I won't touch Barton. Not until I make him kill you! Slowly. Intimately. In every way he knows you fear. And then he’ll wake just long enough to see his good work, and when he screams, I'll split his skull!_

“Yes,” he managed when he thought he could speak, focusing on her breathing, on her pulse. She was alive. She was alive. It had been a dream. He hadn’t destroyed her. “Yes. Loki. It’s always Loki.”

“He didn’t win.” She hugged him a little closer, turning her head to press her lips to the top of his shoulder. “Is it… different every time? Or the same?”

“It would be easier if it were the same. I could reason that away while I was there.” He hugged her a little tighter. “Some things stay similar. But it’s always different.” He tried to relax his grip on her, not wanting to bruise. “At least he wouldn’t have made me live with it,” he said, trying for a lighter tone. “That was nice of him.”

He never had gotten far enough in the dream to reach his own death. The sheer horror of what he had done always broke through, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to survive knowing that he had killed Natasha. Worse even than that, that he’d used the trust and insights she had given him, that she gave no one else, to make it worse and destroy her completely.

“He was all talk.” She shook her head, disgust and anger lowering her voice. “He wouldn’t have made you kill me, or killed you, because he didn’t have the opportunity. He just wanted to weaponize his words. If he’d taken over the world, I wouldn’t have lived long enough for you to kill me-- I would have died fighting the Chitauri. It never would have happened, Clint. Not logically.”

Clint let out a breath, sagging into her a little as the adrenaline left and exhaustion replaced it. “I could have, Nat. We were alone and you got me down, but what if you hadn’t? Most of the time in my dream, that’s where we are.” He forced himself to stop talking as the barrage of images flashed through his head. “Loki probably would have found it very funny to lock me up somewhere cozy and safe to deal with the fact that I’d killed you.”

She shifted her legs and rolled him back to lay on the pillows, remaining propped-up above him on her elbows. “Tony and Steve were still on that ship,” she reminded him. “So were Fury and Hill. You wouldn’t have had the time to actually do anything. Maybe kill me, but not torture. It was talk, Clint. It was a speech to haunt us, nothing more.”

He reached up, stroking a hand through the heavy silk of her hair, tracing a line along her jaw and neck down to her shoulder and her arm. The only good thing that had come out of that mess was this, the shift in their relationship. After Loki, after losing each other for a while, neither of them had been able to keep from taking comfort in physicality. “He chose his words very well,” Clint said quietly. “It’s been forty-eight days and I am successfully haunted.”

“I could hit you in the head again,” she offered with a crooked smile, leaning down and pressing her lips to his temple. “You would never hurt me like that, Clint. You know that.”

He wrapped an arm around her waist, taking in a deep breath. “It looked like I was hitting you pretty hard. It wasn’t me, it was- well it was me, but it wasn’t your me. I didn’t even recognize you.”

“You didn’t leave any bruises,” she pointed out, easing her fingers through his hair. “Most of that was the Hulk, or having a pipe dropped on top of me. Compared to that, you were a light breeze.” She grinned a little.

He let out a breath. “I think you’re lying. There’s no way I didn’t leave bruises. Bruises are my specialty.” But he felt better, a little, with her sitting on him. It was soothing to have her breath and heartbeat so present, her hands on his chest and in his hair, her eyes warm and understanding, her voice convincing and beautiful and present. Some of the nausea was abating now. “I never wanted to hurt you, Nat. I wanted to be the person you never had to fear that from. That’s my _job._ ”

“Don’t inflate your own ego, you didn’t scare me.” She rolled her eyes. “I’d just faced off against the _Hulk_ , are you kidding? Fighting you was nice and normal after that.” She licked her lips, hesitating, then, “Honestly, I was glad to fight you.”

Confusion cut through some of the misery and guilt and he looked up at her. “What? Why?”

“Because you were finally in front of me.” She moved, shifting to lay along his side. “For better or worse, you were there. I didn’t have to wonder where you were or what was happening to you. It was just you and me, and I could keep you safe. All I had to do was knock your ass out and lock you down so you couldn’t go missing again.”

He searched her face, then wrapped an arm around her, resting his head against hers. He had never met anyone like her- so steady and logical and comforting in the way that she didn’t sugarcoat things or hide them, at least not from him. “I don’t know what the hell I ever did to deserve you, Tasha,” he said on a sigh, resting his fingers above her heartbeat. “Ty moye serdtse, Natasha.” _You are my heart._ Neither of them liked _I love you_ , but it was the same sentiment.

“ _I u tebya yest' moy,_ ” she echoed, leaning up and kissing him slowly. “Now, let me distract you. They say the best way to forget bad memories is to make new ones…”

* * *

#### Natasha

_“Clint.” Natasha caught the bow in her hands and pushed back slightly as he slammed her spine against the railing, the bow pressing hard against her throat. “Clint, you need to break this.” She aimed a kick at his knee and he twisted her back, slamming her harder into the metal bar behind her. There was a crunch, and pain erupted, sending explosions of heat across her bones. Natasha couldn’t stop the yell of pain that escaped, nor could she keep her feet when Clint took a step back._

_“Clint.” She struggled to push herself back up, but her legs weren’t working right, and each movement sent more pain lancing down her body. Clint’s kick caught her in the shoulder and she was tossed back onto her back. “Your name is Clint Barton, and this isn’t you,” she gritted out, pulling her gun out. His boot slammed down on her fingers, bones grinding in them as he knelt down, straddling her._

_“I know who I am.” He pulled out an arrow, notched it, fired. One hand was pierced, pinned down by the arrow embedded through it. It only took a second for the other hand and she took in a sharp breath, trying to get her feet into a position to spring up from._

_“My name is Natasha Romanoff, I’m your partner.”_

_“I know who you are, Nat. I just don’t care.” He locked one hand around her throat, his other hand holding a knife and reaching for the zipper of her suit, his eyes horribly blue and coldly hollow--_

“Stop!” Natasha was tangled in a sheet, and she shoved herself off the bed, grabbing the gun that she always kept on the nightstand.

And it was Clint in the crosshairs as she focused, Clint standing before her with his hands low, palms up, watching her carefully and giving her space. “It’s okay,” he said, voice warm and gentle. “It’s okay, Tasha. You’re okay. It was a dream. Talk to me. What was it?”

“Which one are you?” She pulled her finger off the trigger, but she didn’t lower the gun, struggling to identify the color of his eyes in the dim light. Her breathing was hoarse, but steady enough. She could fight if she needed to. She could hit his head, she could get him back. She couldn’t let him stay like that. She wouldn’t let any of it come true.

Pain flashed across his face and he took a deep breath. “I’m going to turn on the light,” he said, tone even and careful. “So you can watch my hand, I’m just turning in the light.” He leaned over, every movement slow and deliberate, and the bedside lamp flicked on with a click.

Grey eyes looked back at her as he straightened, keeping his hands low and out. “It’s me,” he assured her. “It’s me, Tasha. I’m here. I’m yours, it’s okay. It’s over, you got me back.”

“Shit.” She dropped her hands, setting the gun down heavily on the nightstand. She dropped to sit on the edge of the bed beside it, rubbing her forehead. “Shit, I’m sorry.”

It wasn’t the first time. Her nightmares were less frequent than his, but they came every so often. The topics changed: fear that who he was had been lost, that he’d stayed away and was stuck in that state, that she’d hit him too hard and he hadn’t made it, that he’d fulfilled Loki’s promise and was going to die screaming. The nightmares were why she’d stopped keeping her gun under her pillow and had moved it to the nightstand. She couldn’t risk moving too fast, hitting him or shooting before she could think and process where and when she was.

“It’s all right.” He sat beside her and took one of her hands, rubbing it between both of his. She didn’t react, didn’t let on how deeply soothing she found that. She didn’t need to anyways-- he knew everything about her. “People forget that it was awful for you too. We went through something traumatic. It’s okay that it still affects you.” His leg rested against hers. “Do you want to talk through it?” 

Sometimes that helped, talking through them. Especially the ones where she thought she’d killed him or he was lost or still gone somewhere as he pointed out everything logical in their room, in the house he claimed to have bought for himself (but she knew deep down he’d bought for them), that proved that this was real and her dreams weren’t.

“I just…” she let out a breath, dropping her free hand to his knee. “When you pushed me back against the railing, I was fine. In the dream, it messed up my spine. I couldn’t stop you, I couldn’t hit your head.”

He nodded, squeezing the hand he still held. “The loss of mobility for someone like you would be horrific,” he agreed quietly. “You’re so active, you never stop and you’re so capable, losing that when you depend on your physical abilities is terrifying. I know. I’m sorry.” He pressed his lips to her eyebrow gently. “But that’s not what happened. You pushed me off and made sure I couldn’t hurt you. You took care of us both.” He lifted her legs and rested them over his, rubbing his hands up and down them gently.

Natasha let out a breath, dropping her forehead to his shoulder. “I hope Asgardian prisons are rough,” she muttered, hooking her legs around his knees and pulling him a little closer.

“I like to think that Thor goes down there regularly and kicks his ass,” Clint agreed lightly, wrapping his arms around her and rubbing her back. “I know that they’re dreams and you can’t stop them,” he murmured against her hair, “But try and remember that you are a badass woman who deserves to be an actual goddess. You kept us both alive and safe, you brought me home, and you woke me up. You could never fail. You are the most incredible thing in the world and Loki should have known who he was dealing with.” He kissed her temple. “In any case, I don’t think I would have actually hurt you. It was breaking, a little, at the end. I remember a little there toward the end, before you hit me. I think you were getting through.”

Natasha laughed quietly, shutting her eyes. “Does it ever strike you as funny that we argue each others’ points after these? You’re confident in yourself, but only after my nightmares. I’m confident in the logic of it, but only after yours.”

He laughed, hugging her a little tighter. “My confidence in myself is variable,” he informed her, “But my confidence in you is unshakeable. I’d leap out of a damn airplane without a parachute like Steve does if you said I’d land fine.”

“You wouldn’t land fine,” she informed him firmly. “Absolutely do not do that.”

His voice grinned. “You never know. If we had a giant marshmallow or a big enough bounce house it might be all right. You ever want to kill me, just tell me to jump and I’ll assume you have a plan.”

“Then I’d have to be responsible for distracting myself from my missions. What satisfaction would there be in that?” She laughed, pushing on his shoulder so that they both laid back on the bed. “You’re the most ridiculous man I’ve ever met. You know that?”

He smiled up at her, so warm and present and focused, his eyes and expression so far away from that of her nightmares. Clint reached up, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I am well aware,” he informed her. “But for some damn reason it seems to make you laugh and honestly I’d jump out of a plane without a chute into a volcano of broken glass and nails if it would make you laugh, so.” He grinned up at her. “It’s still the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.”

Her fingers traced lightly over his hearing aids and she shook her head with a smile. “You’re a madman,” she dismissed, curling her hand around his and pressing them to her heart for a moment. It was still late, she registered in the background of her mind. The clock read only five minutes after two. “Let’s go back to sleep, _solntse._ ”

There was that softness that always entered his face whenever she called him that and he pulled her down to curl into his side, hugging her close. “Okay,” he agreed, pulling the blankets around him and tucking the sheet around her carefully. “Sleep. I’m here. We’re home.”

She tucked her head under his chin, pulling herself into her usual ball against his body, and revelled in the warmth that his embrace always brought. “ _Ty moye serdtse_ ,” she murmured, signing the words against his chest as she said them.

She felt more than heard or saw his smile. “ _I u tebya yest' moy,_ ” he whispered in her ear, stroking a hand through her hair. _And you have mine._

And Natasha slept, dreamless and quiet. 

It would be a year before they stopped having the nightmares with any sense of regularity. Clint’s would continue longer than Natasha’s, but they would talk each other down each time and eventually the horrors of Loki’s words faded with time and the knowledge of just how wrong he’d been. Neither of the agents had ever quite been the type to allow the other to remain compromised, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Followed the prompt except I maintain that Clint wouldn't be dumb enough to be within Natasha's reach when she's having a bad dream.


End file.
